POCKET SERIES NO. 167 
Edited by E. Haldeman.-Julius 

vc lotion Made 
Plain 

JOHN MASON 



H VLDEMAN-JULIUS COMPANY 
GIRARD, KANSAS 





POCKET SERIES NO. 467 

Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius 

Evolution 
Made Plain 

John Mason 

* > 


HALDEMAN-JULIUS COMPANY 
GIRARD, KANSAS 





Copyright, 1923, 
Haldeman-Julius Company. 




DEC-i *23 

©Cl A 7 63890 





EVOLUTION MADE PLAIN 


The time has come ivhcn scientific truth must 
cease to he the property of the few—when it 
must he woven into the common life of the 
world. — Agassiz. 

Read not to contradict and confute, nor to 
believe and take for granted, * * * hut to weigh 
and consider. — Bacon. 

The man who will not investigate both sides 
of a question is dishonest.—Abraham Lincoln. 

Intolerance is the product of an ignorant, 
primitive mind. We should tolerate anything 
of an intellectual nature except intolerance. 
Freedom of opinion is the root, flower and 
fruit of liberty—its very essence. — Anonymous. 

WHAT EVOLUTION IS AND IS NOT 

Addison said, “The real substance of a bulky 
volume can be condensed into a small pam¬ 
phlet’’; and it is believed that the fundamental 
principles of a great scientific discovery like 
evolution can be outlined in a few pages, and 
in a way so plain and in words so simple that 
any one who is at all interested can get a fairly 
good understanding of its scope. With this idea 
in mind an attempt is here made to explain 
evolution, to tell what some of its laws are and 
how they work, and to present briefly some of 
the evidences that support the doctrine. 

Contrary to popular belief evolution is not 


4 EVOLUTION MADE PLAIN 

confined to the origin of man, but it explains 
how ail living things have become as we now 
see them, and how and why the most of them 
are being changed. It teaches that all living 
species of plants and animals, including man, 
also the thousands of extinct species which 
have left their fossil records in stratified rocks, 
have been developed from a few small and 
simple forms—probably one, and that a mere 
cell. And it shows, too, that this has been 
done by the operation of natural laws, the 
same laws we see in operation today. 

Evolution does not teach that every living 
thing is “day by day, in every way, growing 
better and better.” On the contrary, it shows 
that many species deteriorate, are driven to 
the wall and become extinct, while only the 
best fitted survive. For instance, of the twen¬ 
ty-five orders of reptiles in the Jurassic period 
—known to the geologists by their fossils— 
only five have come down to our times. But 
out of the reptilian orders, then the highest 
forms of living things, have come the superior 
orders of later times—birds and mammals. 
And this is evolution. 

We sometimes hear the statement that sci¬ 
entists are not in agreement in regard to evo¬ 
lution. The point of disagreement is in respect 
to the part played by natural selection in the 
development of species, and not as to whether 
or not evolution is a fact. The discussion is 
in regard to the how of the fact and not the 
fact itself. No great scientist since Agassiz, 
who died in 1S73, has opposed evolution. 

Neither does evolution teach that one species 


EVOLUTION MADE PLAIN 


5 


may develop into another, as that the goat may 
develop into the deer, or that the ape may 
evolve into man. For one species to become 
another existing species it would have to take 
the back track to the point where the two 
species began to diverge and travel the other 
route—which of course would be impossible. 
This may help in getting the idea: the larger 
divisions and groups of animals (fishes, rep¬ 
tiles, mammals, etc.) may be compared to the 
main or primary branches of a tree, the fami¬ 
lies and orders (as the deer, the cat, and the 
dog) to the secondary branches growing from 
the primary ones, and the species to the further 
divisions of the secondary branches. Now we 
can see that one species can no more become 
another—that is, any now existing—than one 
branch of a tree can become another. A spe¬ 
cies can, in time, if subject to the proper con¬ 
ditions, split into varieties which, if developed 
far enough, may become distinct species. But 
no one of these species can be said to have 
been evolved from a contemporary species, for 
all have been changed, and the stock from 
which they came has ceased to exist as such. 
Each of the existing species would have a dis¬ 
tinct name such as, for instance, cow, bison, 
Cape buffalo, yak. Now suppose the fossil re¬ 
mains of the common ancestor of the above- 
named species were found—what should it be 
called, cow, bison, Cape buffalo, or yak? It 
would be neither, for it would probably differ 
as much or more from them as they differ 
among themselves. Thus is laid to rest the 
idea that evolution is a theory that man was 
evolved from, or by way of, the monkey or the 


6 EVOLUTION MADE PLAIN 

ape. They are as distinct species as is man 
himself. 

GEOLOGICAL EVIDENCES OF PROGRESSIVE 
DEVELOPMENT 

All life on this globe is divided into two 
great classes, vegetable and animal. All ani¬ 
mals belong to one or the other of two grand 
divisions: invertebrates (those without back¬ 
bones) and veterbrates (the backboned). The 
latter class, comprising more than 30,000 known 
species, is subdivided into five great groups: 
fishes, frogs, reptiles, birds and mammals. At 
the top of the highest group, mammals (those 
which bring forth their young alive), is man. 
Birds and mammals were evolved from the rep¬ 
tiles—both offshoots of the same stock—and 
are contemporaneous in development and de¬ 
scent. 

The various classes and groups of animals, 
both in the order of development from the 
simple to the complex and in the time of their 
arrival, are in the order named: first the small, 
one-celled animals (many species of which are 
found today) then more complex organisms of 
the invertebrate division, later the fishes, am¬ 
phibians, reptiles, and mammals, including 
man. 

The story told by the geologist is in perfect 
agreement with those laws of development 
which we call evolution. The lowest, simplest 
forms of life are the oldest as is shown by 
their fossil remains (bones, shells, etc.) found 
in stratified or water-laid rock. These fossils 
were deposited in sediment as it formed in sea 


EVOLUTION MADE PLAIN 7 

and lake thousands and millions of years ago. 
In the movements of the earth’s crust the sedi¬ 
ment of ancient sea and lake bottoms was 
raised above the water and became land, the 
sediment hardening into rock. All sediment is 
formed on a level, but in its up-heaval—gener¬ 
ally slow, sometimes violent—it is often tilted 
at various angles exposing its edges. It is 
from this out-cropping, stratified rock (the sum 
of which is often several miles in depth) that 
forms the outer part of the earth’s crust that 
the geologist reads the story of creation. 

The oldest or lowest water-laid rock is the 
archaean in which there are no fossils. Above 
this, in the stratum formed in a later period 
are found evidences of the beginnings of life. 
After millions of years of growth and develop¬ 
ment the shell fish, at the top of the inverte¬ 
brate group, is produced. Then comes a period 
of uncounted millions of years in which the 
fishes, the lowest of the vertebrates, are being 
developed — millions of years to bridge the 
chasm between the two main divisions of the 
animal kingdom; millions of years to produce 
a backbone! Other long periods of time, filled 
with change and development, come and go— 
the age of the coal plant and of the frogs, suc¬ 
ceeded by the age of reptiles, giant monsters, 
cold-blooded and of small brain, swarming sea 
and land. Long ages pass; the reptilian mon¬ 
sters have become extinct, leaving as their rep¬ 
resentatives only a few dwarfed species—the 
crocodile, the lizard, the snake, the turtle. Of 
mammals the lowest orders arrive first, fol¬ 
lowed by the more highly developed until final¬ 
ly man appears. 


8 EVOLUTION MADE PLAIN 

Naturally, fossils of land animals are few 
compared with those of marine annuals. Practi¬ 
cally all the remains of the latter sank and 
wGie covered with the slowly accumulating 
sediment, while the bones of the former only 
rarely were swept out to sea and lake. Rarest 
or all fossils are those of man. A few have 
been found antedating history by several thou¬ 
sand years, but we get a far more complete 
knowledge of our primitive ancestors from the 
tools and weapons that they left in sediment 
and drift before the dawn of the present era. 
We can trace his progress upward through all 
degrees of culture from the rude old stone age 
of a hundred thousand years ago, through the 
new stone age, the copper and bronze age, and 
the iron age to the beginning of written records. 

Yet, so old is our planet and so long ago 
since life dawned on it—so long even since the 
first mammals appeared—that man’s arrival a 
hundred-or-so thousand years ago is but as yes¬ 
terday. To paraphrase an illustration by,Slade 
and Ferguson: “Suppose we take the earth 
as 365 million years old, and consider this 
period as a year, one million years being taken 
as a day.” Then, on this scale the vertebrates 
came into existence late in the summer or 
early fall, the mammals not earlier than the 
end of November, and “the whole period of 
man is not likely to have been further back 
than the evening of December 31st, and the 
earliest historic evidence (in Egypt) is not 
more than ten minutes before the last mid¬ 
night”—“the last midnight,” of course, being 
the present. 


EVOLUTION MADE PLAIN 


9 


EVIDENCES OF EVOLUTION 

Of the many evidences of the kinship of all 
animals including man only a few can be men¬ 
tioned in this book. All animals, man included, 
are constructed on the same general plan. 
They have the same organs — brain, heart, 
lungs, digestive tract, nerves, skin—perform¬ 
ing the same functions for the same purposes. 
The skeleton of man can be compared, bone for 
bone, with that of a monkey, bat or seal. The 
bat’s membranous wing is ribbed with bones 
corresponding to the bones of a monkey’s or 
a man’s hand. The wing of both the bat and 
the bird has one bone from the shoulder to 
the first joint, and two bones from the first 
to the second joint, like the fore leg of quadru¬ 
peds and the arm of man—thus proving that 
the fore leg, the arm and the wing are only 
modifications of the same limb. The biped bird 
and biped man are modified quadrupeds. 

All the five hundred muscles of the human 
body correspond with the muscles of other 
mammals. Even the brain, wherein man dif¬ 
fers most from the lower animals, has the 
same chief fissures and folds in both man and 
the animal nearest man, the orang-outang. Man 
and the other animals have the same five 
senses and the same sense organs. They in 
common have the same basic emotions, such 
as surprise, jealousy, pride, hatred, shame, 
anger, grief, affection, and' a sense of the ludi¬ 
crous. Bucks says, “So is man’s so-called hu¬ 
man mind rooted in the senses and the in¬ 
stincts of all his ancetral species; and not only 


10 EVOLUTION MADE PLAIN 

so, but these senses and instincts still live in 
him, making up, indeed, far the larger part of 
his current everyday life; while his higher psy¬ 
chical life is merely the outgrowth and flower 
of them.” 

The.old formula was: “Man is governed by 
reason; brutes by instinct.” But science has 
proved that lower animals are not guided al¬ 
together by instinct, that many of their actions 
are the results of mental activities remarkably 
similar to reasoning. On the other hand man 
himself has instinct—and well for him that he 
has, for his reason, as yet, is only partially 
developed. If we will but subtract from the 
sum of man’s actions, not only those prompted 
by instinct, but those also that result from 
habit, custom, prejudice, and the emotions of 
anger, revenge, vanity, and other elemental 
passions, we will not feel like crying from the 
housetops that “man is governed by reason.” 

Man and the lower animals have similar dis¬ 
eases. He is liable to contract from, or com¬ 
municate to them, such diseases as glanders, 
hydrophobia, cholera, tuberculosis. Drugs, to¬ 
bacco and alcohol have the same effects on 
animals as on us. 

Of course the dog, the ape, the horse and 
man do not perfectly agree in their correspond¬ 
ing parts and in their natures—if they did they 
would belong to the same species—but their 
similarities are so remarkable that they have 
a profound meaning for the thoughtful, how¬ 
ever meaningless they may be to the thought¬ 
less and the prejudiced. 

In embryonic development are found evi¬ 
dences not only of man’s close relationship 


EVOLUTION MADE PLAIN 11 

with all animals but of the long, long route he 
and they have travelled in tlieir common de¬ 
scent from the simpler forms of life. Darwin 
says that the whole process of reproduction, 
from the first act of courtship by the male 
to the birth and nuturing of the young, is very 
much the same in all mammals. 

The lowest forms of animal life, the one- 
celled animals, are without sex, and multiply 
by dividing into half, each half developing into 
a complete cell, which in turn is subjected to 
the same dividing process. Many species of 
these lowly organisms still exist, never having 
developed further than the unicellular stage. 
All higher forms, as of fishes, reptiles, birds, 
mammals, begin life at this point—as a single 
cell. The cell, germ, or ovum of an embryo 
(the young of a mammal before birth) when 
fertilized divides, forming two cells, the two 
divide into four, the four into eight, and so on, 
until there is a colony of similar cells en- 
massed, and with a little rod of tissue—the be¬ 
ginnings of the spinal column—running through. 
The embryo at this stage is passing beyond 
the lowest grand division, the invertebrates. 
Entering the vertebrate division the embryo 
passes into the fish group. Deep grooves, gill 
slits, appear on the side of the neck of the 
embryo and six pairs of arched branches of 
arteries arise, just as in fishes, as if to give 
blood to the gills. Later all but one of these 
pairs disappear. The arms and legs of the 
child, like the legs of all other embryos, begin 
to develop, and continue to do so for some 
time, on the same plan as the fins of fishes. 

Further along in its development the embryo 


12 EVOLUTION MADE PLAIN 

assumes all the characteristics of the quadru¬ 
ped even to the tail which in the human em¬ 
bryo at this stage is longer than its legs. Dur¬ 
ing the sixth month the entire body of the 
human foetus, except the palms and soles, is 
covered with fine, woolly hair. 

Thus far the human embryo has developed 
in the same way, has undergone the same 
changes, has passed through precisely the same 
stages as the embryo of other animals. In its 
further development it leaves them all behind 
except those nearest man. Its tail disappears, 
and it now has an opposable or thumb-like 
great toe which with the monkey and the ape 
is a permanent characteristic. It is only in 
the latest stages of development that the hu¬ 
man embryo presents marked differences from 
the embryonic ape. 

Of the fact that the embryo in its develop¬ 
ment from a single fertilized cell passes 
through all the stages representative of the 
principal animal divisions, and in a progressive 
order from the simple to the complex and 
highly developed, there is no explanation but 
that of heredity and descent—of descent of 
the higher animals from the lower with hered¬ 
ity transmitting the records of the remote an¬ 
cestral stages. Each stage, as of the fish, the 
quadruped, the ape, is a sign board along the 
route of man’s descent. The nine months’ em¬ 
bryonic period of each of us is an epitome of 
the history of the race down to the human 
period. 

Nor do the evidences of race-history as re¬ 
vealed by the child cease with its birth. The 
babe is nearer the lower mammals than is the 


EVOLUTION MADE PLAIN 13 

adult man. When it acquires the use of its 
limbs it begins life as a quadruped. Its blund¬ 
ering attempts in learning to stand erect and 
walk is evidence of the fact that man’s peculiar 
mode of locomotion is a late acquirement. Like 
the lower animals the babe makes known its 
wants by means of natural language; it later 
acquires artificial or spoken language in the 
same slow, laborious way that it was acquired 
by the race. At the average age of three years 
the child has become self-conscious; his mind 
has passed the mental stage of all animals be¬ 
low man. Psychically he has become man. 

In certain periods of youth the child is a 
tree-climber, a cave-digger, childish sports that 
hark back to periods passed through hundreds 
of thousands of years ago in the childhood of 
the race. At a certain stage his emotional 
nature has developed to the point that he is 
conscious of wrong-doing. This is what the 
old theologians called “the age of accounta¬ 
bility.” If there is a grain of truth in the chaff- 
heap of Mosaic mythology the fall of Adam 
indicates the point in the development of the 
race when conscience had dawned and feelings 
of remorse had begun to stir within. Man had 
reached the age of accountability. But prior 
to the “fall” there was a rise. 

Rudiments or vestiges are also evidences of 
the descent (or ascent) of the higher forms of 
life from the lower. Rudiments are incomplete 
parts of the body which have become arrested 
in their development, and which are now of no 
use, nor would now be of use if fully developed. 
They are relics handed down to us by the 


14 


EVOLUTION MADE PLAIN 


laws of heredity from a long-past age when 
they were well developed and useful to our 
lowly ancestors. Though we outgrow primi¬ 
tive conditions and stages of development we 
can not get rid of the past, but must drag it 
around with us as the snail drags its shell. 


All the higher animals bear within their 
bodies the reminders of a humble origin, some 
of which are: The incisor teeth of certain 
grass-eating animals, so rudimentary as never 
to cut through; the small hoof points of the 
cow which do not touch the ground, and the 
rudimentary fifth and sixth teats on the hinder 
part of her udder; the splint bones in the 
horse’s leg—vestiges of toes when he was a 
three-toed animal; the scanty, downy hair that 
covers the human body. 

Certain muscles by which animals can twitch 
the skin are inherited by some persons who 
can move the scalp and the ears. The sense 
of smell in civilized man has become almost 
rudimentary. The vermiform appendix is not 
only useless but often injurious. It points back 
to the time when our ancestors were strict 
vegetarians—grass-eaters. In the os coccyx 
man carries about with him the rudimentary 
bones of a tail. This, with the fact that the 
human embryo at one stage has a tail longer 
than its legs, is Nature’s everlasting reminder 
that proud man’s remote ancestor was adorned 
with a tail. 


In order to get as clear an idea as possible 
of man’s exact place in the animal scale we 
should note the points wherein man differs 

from Lis nearest relatives—the orang, the go- 


.EVOLUTION MADE PLAIN 15 

rilla, the chimpanzee, the gibbon—as well a& 
the points wherein he agrees with them. Here 
are the most obvious points of dissimilarity. 

• Man walks erect, though in his first year he 
goes on all fours, while apes only occasionally 
walk, and that in a semi-erect position, their 
arms, longer than their legs, reaching the 
ground, knuckles touching. The nose of the 
ape is small, undeveloped; the canine teeth 
are very large; the mouth projects, and there 
is no chin. The entire body except the palms 
'and soles is covered with hair. The brain 
capacity of the ape i& less than half that of 
man. 

On the other hand there are more points of 
similarity than of dissimilarity between man 
and the apes; and if the points wherein they 
differ be examined they will be found to be 
differences in degree rather than in kind. The 
higher apes are entirely without tails; the em¬ 
bryo of the ape, like the human foetus, loses 
its tail sometime before birth. The young ape 
(monkey also) is born in almost as helpless a 
condition as is the human babe. The female 
ape has two mammary glands '(udders) and 
they are always on the chest. Adult apes have 
the same teeth as man—thirty-two in number, 
incisors, canines, premolars, molars. They 
have the same 200 bones, the same 500 muscles, 
the same organs and glands. On their toes 
and fingers they have flat nails, like man, in¬ 
stead of claws. On account of the ape’s op¬ 
posable great toe they were formerly classed 
as four-handed; but this was an error. In all 
essential respects their legs terminate in feet. 


16 


EVOLUTION MADE PLAIN 


Like man they are bipeds, and like man they 
have two hands. The brain of the ape, though 
much smaller than man’s, as we would expect 
it to be, is constructed on the same general 
plan as his with the same main fissures and 
the same groups of cells. There is no “missing 
link” in the plan and structure of man’s brain, 
whatever difference there may be between his 
and the ape’s in capacity. 

No scientist has ever been so foolish as to 
say that man and the apes belong to the same 
species. There are four species of the higher 
apes and one of man, though the one species 
of man is divided into five varieties, called 
“races.” Varieties differ less widely than spe¬ 
cies. Individuals within a variety also differ. 
Differences are no bar to unity if they are 
nullified and outweighed by similarities. 

Finally, let us keep in mind that while man 
has departed from the ancestral type, develop¬ 
ing in one direction, the apes have gone off 
in another and have acquired characteristics 
peculiarly their own. Resemblance in a babe 
and a young ape is far greater than in a man 
and an adult,ape. The same is true of the 
young of all allied species. This divergence 
from birth of the adults of different species is 
strong evidence of a common origin. 

These are only a few of the hundreds of 
evidences proving that man fits into the same 
creative scheme with the lower animals—prov¬ 
ing that he, in common with them, has de¬ 
veloped from still loAver forms, and that, as a 
product of the creative forces of Nature, he is 
wholly subject to her laws. 


EVOLUTION MADE TLAIN 


17 


CONNECTING LINKS 

There is a greater unity of all life than the 
many divisions and sub-divisions of the analyst 
would seem to warrant. The dividing lines be-' 
tween the different classes, orders, families 
and species are more apparent than real, the 
barriers of separation not so impassable as 
appear at first sight. 

To begin at the bottom, there is no hard and 
fast line drawn between living and non-living 
matter—or at least it is not always easy to say 
where the line should be drawn. Tyndall says, 
“The tendency of modern science is to break 
down the wall of partition between the organic 
and the inorganic, and to reduce both to the 
operation of forces which are the same in kind, 
but which are differently compounded.” 

Passing on to the first grand division of life, 
it would seem that nothing could be plainer 
than the line of cleavage between vegetable and 
animal life. Yet there is a twilight zone be¬ 
tween the two where each shades off toward 
the other, and which is inhabited by several 
living species of so doubtful a nature that sci¬ 
entists cannot agree as to which of the two 
great kingdoms they belong. These doubtful 
organisms are claimed by both the botanist 
and the geologist and are described in the text¬ 
books of both. Really they do not belong to 
either division, but are simply organisms that 
have not risen in the scale of life to the diverg¬ 
ing point of the animal and vegetable kingdoms. 

Ascending the animal scale we come to the 
line separating the invertebrates from the ver- 


18 EVOLUTION MADE PLAIN 

tebrates. Here, on the invertebrate side are 
species that have the beginnings of a backbone 
—an elastic smooth cord—and gill-slits, thus 
proving their relationship with the fishes, the 
lowest of the vertebrates. 

The connecting link between the fish and 
the reptile groups is the amphibians—frogs, 
newts, salamanders, etc. The frog in its tad¬ 
pole stage is a fish, but acquiring legs and 
lungs it becomes an air-breather, a land animal. 

Between the reptile and the bird, and having 
certain characteristics of both, there are at 
least three extinct species, known by their 
fossils. One of these, archaeopteryx, had the 
skeleton and feathers of a bird and a reptile 
tail composed of twenty vertebrae. Another 
was a flying reptile with a bird-shaped head. 

Reptiles (snakes, lizards, turtles, aligators, 
etc.) are cold-blooded, egg-laying animals. Birds 
retain the egg-laying characteristic of reptiles 
but are warm-blooded like the mammals. The 
latter differ from both birds and reptiles in 
producing their young alive and suckling them. 
Between the mammal and its ancestor, the 
reptile, but classed with the former is the duck- 
mole of Australia. It is an egg-laying, web¬ 
footed, duck-billed quadruped. After its young 
are batched they are suckled in a sort of mam¬ 
mary pouch which is without nipples. Above 
the duck-mole, but so low in the mammal group 
that they are not really mammals are the 
marsupials (kangaroos, opossums, etc.). Their 
young are so immature at bir-th that they are 
for some time carried in a pouch by the mother. 

We have now come to the last great chasm— 
that between man and the other mammals. 


EVOLUTION MADE PLAIN 19 

As man belongs in the same group with them 
the chasm is not so great in the sum of phys¬ 
ical characters as is that between the fish and 
the reptile groups, or between the reptiles and 
the mammals. In regard to man and the higher 
apes the dividing line, viewed from the stand¬ 
point of descent, is vertical rather than hori¬ 
zontal—like that between mammals and birds. 

There are no species, extinct or extant, be¬ 
tween man and the ape. It is not necessary 
for the proof of evolution that there should be. 
“Missing links” are not more required here 
than they are between birds and mammals 
which were evolved side by side from reptiles. 
If ten feet below the topmost bough of a tree 
there is another branch it is not necessary to 
show that there are, or have been, intermediate 
branches to prove that both grew from the same 
trunk. Missing links are required only in the 
line of descent. 

Discoveries of the fossil remains of man are 
rare for many reasons. (1) Land animals 
rarely leave their remains in the sediment of 
sea and lake. (2) There is small chance of 
the sediment containing the fossils of recently 
arrived animals—more especially of man, the 
latest arrival—being lifted above the water 
level because of the slow movements of the 
earth's crust. (3) Only those animal remains 
that are buried in localities where they will 
be impregnated with certain mineral salts will 
be preserved. (4) They must be able to resist 
those destructive agencies (especially erosion 
by water) that disintegrate the rock in which 
they are embedded if they are to come down 
to us as evidence. (5) Only a small part of 


20 EVOLUTION MADE PLAIN 

the earth as yet has been searched, and nearly 
all the fossil discoveries have been accidental. 
For these reasons the geological record in re¬ 
spect to fossil evidences is far from complete. 
Yet from time to time new discoveries are 
filling in the gaps in the record. 

Anthropologists present us with evidences of 
pre-historic races that were far lower than the 
lowest savage of today. Some of the evidences 
of man’s existence tens of thousands of years 
ago were known before Darwin set the world 
astir with his revolutionary discovery, and the 
old school geologists, like Hugh Miller, who 
had not been entirely weaned from scriptural 
literalism were sadly puzzled in regard to the 
evidences of these “pre-Adamites.” 

Fossils have been found showing several 
gradations or stages in development interme¬ 
diate between man and his pre-human ancestor 
—evidences which, if they do not completely 
bridge the chasm, stand as ruined pillars, 
broken arches, isolated spans of the bridge 
over which man was many hundreds of thou¬ 
sands of years in crossing. 

The first skull discovered (sixty years ago) 
of the Neanderthal men was so entirely dif-’ 
ferent from other pre-historic skulls that one 
scientist declared it was a mal-formation; but 
other fossils were found later that proved the 
peculiarities to be racial characteristics. These 
men, who lived in Europe down to thirty thou¬ 
sand years ago, were squat, bent-kneed, thick- 
skulled, almost chinless, and with ridge-like 
projections over deep-set eyes. In skull de¬ 
velopment they were lower than any savage 
of today. 


EVOLUTION MADE PLAIN 21 

Older than the Neanderthal race, and lower 
in the human scale, were the Heidelberg men, 
said to have been the first really human beings 
of whom we have fossil evidences. Judging 
from the age of the fossil beds they existed 
from 100,000 to 200,000 years ago. 

Thirty years ago were found some of the 
fossil remains of a creature in Java, some forty 
feet below the surface, that show characters 
intermediate between the gorilla and the Ne¬ 
anderthal man; “the lowest human cranium 
yet described, very nearly as much below the 
Neanderthal as this is below the normal Euro¬ 
pean.” This creature was named Pithecanthro¬ 
pus Erectus (erect ape-man). 

Lack of space prevents even a brief descrip¬ 
tion of other and intermediate types of man, 
such as the man of Spy, of Naulette, of Pred- 
most, etc. 

As the more man develops (becomes special¬ 
ized) the farther he is removed from the lower 
animals, so, in tracing his descent toward his 
origin we find him approaching them, apes in¬ 
cluded, in general characteristics, for we ap¬ 
proach the point of divergence. 

Evolution is a fact. There is no doubt of 
that in the minds of those who have investi¬ 
gated the subject without prejudice and with 
the acquisition of truth as the sole aim. One 
may dispute a fact, but he cannot deny it out 
of existence. Those who feel a sense of shame 
for their close proximity to their cousin, the 
monkey, are advised to increase that distance 
by carrying to higher development those traits 
considered peculiarly human: Reason, a sense 
of justice, of broader sympathy, and tolerance. 


22 EVOLUTION MADE PLAIN 

By his great discovery Darwin delivered the 
heaviest solar plexus blow to human vanity it 
ever received. For this he deserves, and re¬ 
ceives, the eternal gratitude of every right- 
thinking man and woman. 

How was evolution brought about? What 
are its laws, and how do they work? 

NATURAL SELECTION 

When the farmer or the stock-breeder selects 
his seeds or his animals for propagating pur¬ 
poses he has an eye to a great natural law, 
heredity. He knows that scrub animals and 
the seeds of degenerate plants will stamp their 
inferiority upon their descendants. He has 
learned that like produces like, therefore he 
selects such seeds and animals as will produce 
those best suited to his purposes. He is not 
only guided by his knowledge of a great law 
of Nature, but in the main he is following her 
method in preserving and improving the breed. 
This method of changing and improving plants 
and animals under domestication is called ar¬ 
tificial selection. 

Plants and animals in the natural state are 
capable of multiplying at so enormous a rate 
that there is an incessant struggle for exist¬ 
ence going on among them. If it were not for 
this fierce struggle with one another and with 
their enemies and other environmental forces 
in which the vast majority die early, the world 
would be overstocked. There is hardly a spe¬ 
cies of animal of which a single pair would not 
choke out all other animal life in a few genera- 


EVOLUTION MADE PLAIN 23 

tions-by filling the world with its descendants 
if all of the one species were permitted to reach 
old age. If a pair of elephants (one of the 
slowest-breeding species of animals) should 
bring forth only six young ones, and all should 
live to be one hundred years old, their descend¬ 
ants in 750 years would number nineteen mil¬ 
lion—a number so great that they would form a 
closely-packed herd occupying forty-one square 
miles. The codfish produces nine million eggs 
a year. If each egg should develop into a ma¬ 
ture fish, half of them females, in ten years 
the sea would be a solid mass of codfish. 

This tendency to increase at so tremendous 
a rate, and the fact that no two individuals are 
exactly alike, supply the material and the con¬ 
ditions for the great law of natural selection 
to operate. Each individual must of necessity 
compete so fiercely with other individuals of 
the same species, and of allied species, and 
with enemies, with climate and changing con¬ 
ditions that out of the struggling many only 
a few live to propagate. Those individuals 
that vary from the mass in the right direction 
live; the others die, leaving few descendants, 
or none. 

Though like produces like there are no two 
individuals exactly alike. If all of the same 
species were alike there would be no opportu¬ 
nity for the law of natural selection to operate. 
Nothing but chance would determine in the 
struggle for existence which individuals would 
live to propagate their species and which would 
die without descendants. Nor would it matter, 
so far as the species is concerned. But indi¬ 
viduals do differ in their traits in some degree 


24 EVOLUTION MADE PLAIN 

—Wallace has shown that variation usually 
amounts from ten to twenty, sometimes twenty- 
five, per cent of the varying part—and this 
variation, even if small, often spells the differ¬ 
ence between an early death with no descend¬ 
ants and a long life with a numerous progeny. 

By the law of heredity the descendants are 
endowed in a greater or less degree with the 
same life-saving characteristics of their par¬ 
ents. Each generation being subjected to this 
weeding-out process, and only a few of the best 
fitted individuals being selected to preserve 
the species, we can easily see that, as the gen¬ 
erations come and go, those essential, life-sav¬ 
ing characters or traits are being developed 
to a greater and greater degree. And this 
means change, modification of species. 

With horn or tooth or claw or hoof or sting 
or poison or odor, among all the wild creatures 
that swim or crawl or run or climb or fly, the 
struggle for life and food and mate goes on 
today just as it has gone on for millions of 
years. Other factors in the struggle are alert¬ 
ness, agility, cunningness, sharpness of vision 
and hearing and smell, protective color of cov¬ 
ering, fleetness of foot and wing, the degree of 
heat, the amount of moisture and the food 
supply. 

The traits that survive are of course those 
that are the most useful in a given environ¬ 
ment. (By environment is meant surroundings, 
all outside influences, the not-me of each in¬ 
dividual.) A change of environment, of the 
conditions of life, calls for a re-adjustment of 
the traits most vital to the individual in the 
new environment. In one environment one 


EVOLUTION MADE PLAIN 25 

highly developed trait would be most useful 
while in another some other character or set 
of characters wouid be the saving factor, be¬ 
cause a change of environment means a change 
of weather conditions, of the food supply and 
the means of getting it, of enemies, etc. 

From the foregoing brief outline it would 
seem that only a little exercise of reason is 
required of any one to see that natural selec¬ 
tion operating in unlike environments would, 
in the course of many generations, produce 
from the same species types of animals (or 
plants) very unlike—not only unlike each 
other but unlike their parent species. At first 
these types derived from a common ancestor 
would be only varieties, but varieties are in¬ 
cipient species. Given sufficient time, and the 
intervention of natural barriers to prevent the 
crossing of extremes, and the creation of new 
species would be the natural result. 

As a vivid illustration of how the law of 
natural selection works, and of how great is 
the sum of the results of its operation accumu¬ 
lated through many generations, let us observe 
one of many modifications an animal under¬ 
goes in its struggle for existence. To the ques¬ 
tion, “Why are animals of the arctic regions 
white?” we ought to be able, with what we al¬ 
ready know of natural selection, to give the 
answer. Imagine those lands of snow and ice 
originally inhabited by animals of all colors 
from white to black, or even of all shades of 
one color, brown. The animals of what colors 
or shades, among the flesh-eaters, would have 
the least difficulty in stealthily approaching 


26 


EVOLUTION MADE PLAIN 


their prey, and so, be most apt to survive in 
the struggle against starvation? And which 
among the animals preyed on would run the 
least risk of detection and so be most likely 
to escape destruction? The answer to both 
questions, of course, would be, “Those whose 
colors most nearly conformed to the snowy 
background.” Imagine this process of culling 
out the darker colors continuing for many gen¬ 
erations and we can understand that the white¬ 
ness of all arctic animals would be the inevit¬ 
able result. We can also see why most wild 
animals of our regions are of colors that best 
harmonize with the brown earth and dead 
leaves. Let us keep in mind the fact that while 
we were observing the modification of one 
character, all the favorable variations, how¬ 
ever slight, in every other character that could 
be of the least advantage to those creatures 
were being added up as fast as they appeared. 
After several generations, if for any cause the 
environment were undergoing a radical change, 
or if a species had migrated from a widely dif¬ 
ferent one, a greatly modified animal would be 
the result. However, there can be no mod¬ 
ification in an animal perfectly adapted to its 
environment—provided the environment does 
not change. 

Every organ, and every other part of the 
body, internal and external, of every creature 
in the natural state is subject to modification 
by the law of natural selection, just as was the 
color of the hair or the feathers of polar ani¬ 
mals. 

Man’s method of improving plants and ani- 


EVOLUTION MADE TLAIN 27 

mals—artificial selection—interferes with the 
work of natural selection. For one thing, man 
makes a radical change in the environment of 
every plant and animal he domesticates; for 
another, man selects for other purposes than 
the one Nature has in view—that is, if it 
can be said that Nature has a purpose. 

From the same parent stock man breeds one 
strain of cattle for beef, another for milk and 
butter; one variety of the horse for the saddle 
and another for draft purposes. Nature adapts 
the species to the environment—never the en¬ 
vironment to the species—sacrificing those in¬ 
dividuals that do not measure up to her stand¬ 
ard. She seems to care only for the species, 
not for the individuals, or only for those indi¬ 
viduals that give promise of a better species. 

This secret wrung from Nature (natural se¬ 
lection as a factor in progressive development) 
is man’s most precious truth, for it is the key 
to his further progress. 

To summarize: organisms tend to increase 
at a great rate; this intensifies the struggle for 
existence; organisms vary; in the struggle for 
existence the vast majority die early, leaving 
those that vary in the favorable direction to 
live and reproduce; this means change, prog¬ 
ress. This is natural selection. 

There is also De Vries’ “Mutations theory” 
which some scientists believe to have been an 
important factor in evolution. It is the theory 
that at times a species may progress by “jumps” 
—that is, that occasionally individuals come 
into existence that vary extremely from the 
mass, and that they may become the parents 


28 EVOLUTION MADE PLAIN 

of a new species. It is on account of the rela¬ 
tive value attached by some scientists to this 
theory and to natural selection that they dis¬ 
agree, and not in regard to whether or not 
evolution is a fact. 

NATURAL SELECTION IN SOCIAL EVOLUTION 

The law of natural selection, or of the sur¬ 
vival of the fittest, is not confined to plant and 
animal life. Its sway is universal. Every 
thing that is born, spawned, hatched, sprouted, 
conceived, invented, or founded is tested by this 
law, and if found inefficient, unfit, is weeded 
out, leaving the fittest, the best, the truest to 
survive. 

On the mental plane the law of the survival 
of the fittest is often restricted in its opera¬ 
tion, and the struggle unnecessarily prolonged, 
because of the intolerance of those of the older, 
dominant belief. The world lags because they 
refuse to permit the new idea to meet the old 
on equal terms before the only court having 
jurisdiction over truth and error—the court of 
Reason. 

Intolerant people—and they are legion— 
either lack faith in the power of truth to tri¬ 
umph over error, or they harbor a lurking 
doubt in their own minds in regard to the 
amount of truth embodied in the belief they so 
anxiously shield. They regard belief—their be¬ 
lief—as something to be protected at any cost. 
Freedom of opinion, intellectual honesty, truth 
itself must yield rather than their belief be 


29 


EVOLUTION MADE PLAIN 

in jeopardy. They seem to think it more 
blessed to believe something they received at 
second hand than to investigate and know the 
truth. With them it’s “Believe so and so; open 
your mouths like young mocking-birds and 
swallow it, smack your lips and call it good.” 
For people of that mental type to tell us to 
think—why, that is never thought of. 

This forcing one to subscribe to a doctrine 
through fear, or to accept an idea on authority, 
belongs to the medieval : ge. And we resent it 
—we whose minds have not been altogether 
shaped by the kingly, priestly authority of five 
hundred years ago. We say, “Give us the evi¬ 
dences of your belief; if they are sufficient we 
cannot help believing. Let us meet in fair dis¬ 
cussion and compare evidences. Drop your in¬ 
tolerance. Let your idea stand or fall on its 
merits—that’s all we ask of ours. Let the law 
of natural selection have a chance to operate.” 

Not belief, but truth, is the one essential, and 
when discussion reveals the evidence support¬ 
ing it belief is attracted to it like steel filings 
to a magnet. 0 ye of little faith, doubt not 
that in a struggle for existence between truth 
and error the fittest, that is, truth, will sur¬ 
vive and error be eliminated. 

Truth crushed to earth will rise again— 

The eternal years are hers—- 
While Error, wounded, writhes in pain 
And dies among her worshippers. 

“A lie on the throne is a lie, still, and truth 
in a dungeon is truth, still; and a lie on the 
throne is on the way to defeat, and truth in a 
dungeon is on the way to victory.” 


30 EVOLUTION MADE PLAIN 

‘‘If there is anything that cannot stand the 
truth, let it crack.” 

EVOLUTION AND THE BIBLE 

The Bible itself contains evidences of evolu¬ 
tion. As the Jews climbed up in the scale of 
civilization their ideals, their conception of 
what should constitute a God, also arose. It is 
a far cry from the ancient Hebraic conception 
of God, down through the prophets to the idea 
of divinity as taught by Jesus. Let the reader 
lay aside his prejudice, if any he has, be hon¬ 
est with himself, and compare Jehovah of the 
early Jews with Jesus’ portrayal of God as a 
father, as one whose synonym is live. 

Jehovah, according to the early writers, was 
stern, wrathful, vengeful—“I will mock you in 
your calamities”; vain and jealous—“I, the 
Lord thy God, am a jealous God”; cruel—hard¬ 
ening the hearts of his powerless victims in 
order to punish them for doing what they could 
not help doing, and according to Joshua, Je¬ 
hovah commanded him to kill all his enemies, 
old and young, even the children, and he gave 
the captured wives of the enemy to the sol¬ 
diers of the Jewish army; deceptive—“I have 
sent lying spirits unto Aliab”; in short, and in 
very truth, he was a god having all the frail¬ 
ties and imperfections of man, and not man at 
his best either. 

Take the Genesis story of creation:—When 
Jehovah created Adam he knew (being an all¬ 
wise God) that Adam would fall. Therefore, 
Adam could not have done otherwise than to 


31 


EVOLUTION MADE PLAIN 

yield to temptation; for to have resisted would 
have proved God’s foreknowledge false. Then 
why pronounce a curse on one (and his bil¬ 
lions of descendants) for doing what God’s 
foreknowledge made unavoidable? 

Again it is said that when Jehovah made up 
his mind to destroy the human race “it re¬ 
pented the Lord that he had made man on the 
earth”—that is, he had made a mistake, like 
you and I, and was sorry of it, like you and I. 
How like a man was Jehovah in his short¬ 
sightedness! 

And this is a part of that story of the origin 
of man which we are asked to accept by the 
anti-evolutionists instead of the scientific ex¬ 
planation. 

Before history there was mythology. Beyond 
the earliest ascertained historic facts of every 
people, of every early nation, was a mass of 
myths portraying its childish beliefs concern¬ 
ing its origin, its gods, its heroes, etc. The 
Jewish nation was no exception. Scriptural 
literalists, those who believe in the verbal in¬ 
spiration of the Bible, know that all ancient 
peoples had their myths—all except the Jews. 
In the face of a million facts they still contend 
that the impossible stories of the early Jews 
are true as gospel—in fact that they are a part 
of the gospel. 

The greatest obstacle to the popular accept¬ 
ance of the doctrine of evolution is a belief 
in the verbal inspiration of the Bible and its 
literal interpretation. The more conservative 
or orthodox element of the churches regards 
the Bible as a direct quotation of the exact 


32 EVOLUTION MADE PLAIN 

words of God. Their conception of inspira¬ 
tion is that the various writers merely held the 
pen while God caused it to move over the sur¬ 
face of the parchment tracing the characters 
that spelled his very words. The fact that the 
various books of the Bible are written in al¬ 
most as many different styles would seem to 
disprove verbal inspiration to any thinking 
mind. Certainly, those books called the Bible 
are inspired, and in precisely the same sense as 
Shakespeare’s plays, Burns’ poems and Emer¬ 
son’s essays are inspired—that is, the writers 
felt strongly an impulse to write; and in every 
instance the writings were stamped with the 
individuality of the author. 

All inspiration is not on the same level—the 
higher the spirituality the deeper the source. 
For example, as one writer has pointed out, 
when Paul said, “Alexander the coppersmith 
did me much evil; the Lord reward him ac¬ 
cording to his works,” he was not inspired in 
the same sublime degree as was Jesus, when, 
rising above his own sufferings, he remembered 
his tormentors in the prayer: “Father, forgive 
them; they know not what they do.” 

The belief in verbal inspiration has scotched 
the wheels of progress at every turn. Four 
hundred years ago those who taught the ro¬ 
tundity of the earth were denounced as heretics. 
It was a belief in verbal inspiration that in¬ 
spired the church to force Galileo, who taught 
that the earth is not the center of the universe, 
but that it revolves around the sun, to make the 
recantation: “I, Galileo, being in my seventieth 
year, being a prisoner and on my knees before 


EVOLUTION MADE PLAIN 33 

your eminences * * abjure, detest and curse the 
error and the heresy of the movement of the 
earth.” Even Newton’s great discovery of the 
law of gravitation was denounced as “sub¬ 
versive of natural, and inferentially, of re¬ 
vealed rligion.” 

A hundred years ago the use of anesthetics 
in childbirth was opposed in Scotland on the 
ground that it was seeking to remove the curse 
God had placed upon the daughters of Eve for 
her transgression. 

King Charles of Spain declared that the dig¬ 
ging of a canal across the isthmus of Panama, 
thus severing North and South America, would 
be a sin; for is it not written: “What God hath 
joined together let no man put asunder”? 

In America the famous Rev. Cotton Mather 
wrote a letter to John.Higginson informing him 
that the “general court” had given secret orders 
to a sea captain to waylay William Penn and 
the one hundred Quaker colonists—“heretics 
and malignants”—who were then on their way 
to Pennsylvania, capture the “ungodly crew” 
and sell them “to Barbadoes, where slaves fetch 
good prices in rum and sugar,” for in so doing 
“the lord may be glorified and not mocked 
on soil of this new country,” closing his pious 
letter with the felicitous phrase, “Yours in the 
bowels of Christ.” 

In 1826 the school board of Lancaster, Ohio, 
refused to permit the use of the schoolhouse for 
a debate as to whether railroads were prac¬ 
ticable. The letter reads: “You are welcome 
to the schoolhouse to debate all proper ques¬ 
tions in, but such things as railroads and tele- 


34 EVOLUTION MADE PLAIN 

phones (the possibility of which were talked 
then) are impossibilities and rank infidelity; 
there is nothing in the Word of God about 
them. If God designed that his intelligent crea¬ 
tures should travel at the frightful speed of 
15 miles an hour He would have clearly fore¬ 
told it through his holy prophets. It is a de¬ 
vice of Satan to lead immortal souls down to 
hell.” 

Is there needed stronger proof than this of 
the mental slavery to which the belief in verbal 
inspiration reduces its devotees? 

Today those who oppose evolution for biblical 
reasons occupy the same absurd position as 
those who persecuted Galileo, denounced New¬ 
ton, opposed the use of anesthetics in child¬ 
birth, thwarted the digging of a Panama canal, 
regarded the introduction of railroads and other 
industrial innovations as tricks of the devil to 
damn our souls, and approved the selling into 
slavery of the adherents of a rival Christian 
sect. 

This medieval belief of verbal inspiration has 
filled the Christian world with strife and in¬ 
tolerance, and has drenched its soil with the 
blood of tens of thousands of “heretics.” It 
was this belief that for hundreds of years im¬ 
pelled whatever sect that had the power, be it 
Catholic or Protestant, to persecute, imprison, 
torture, burn, kill in every conceivable way 
those who differed with it in the interpretation 
of certain scriptural texts. T.his narrow, intol¬ 
erant belief, the very negation of the Christ 
spirit, lives today—but, thanks to modern sci¬ 
ence and intellectual progress, its teeth are 
drawn. 


EVOLUTION MADE PLAIN 35 

Let us get this straight: evolution is not, 
in the slightest degree, opposed to religion; but 
it does conflict with the noxious growths of 
superstition and doctrinalism which half con¬ 
ceals religion. True Christianity will shine all 
the brighter with its concealments cleared 
away. The study of evolution broadens and 
enlarges one’s conception of religion. Those 
who are afraid that to accept evolution would 
cause them to “lose their faith” are already 
weak in faith. 

Those who insist on, as of paramount impor¬ 
tance, a belief in some mystical “plan of sal¬ 
vation,” including certain rites to be observed, 
are Paulinists rather than Christians. Scat¬ 
tered throughout Paul’s writings are expres¬ 
sions regarding the fall of Adam, the total de¬ 
pravity of man, the atoning blood of Christ, 
etc., which are harmless enough if regarded 
simply as rhetorical flourishes, but linked up 
in a finely wrought out scheme of redemption, 
and coupled with an insistence on the abso¬ 
lute necessity of belief in the same as the only 
means of individual salvation—why, this Paul¬ 
ine gospel- has catered to human selfishness, 
has filled the world with theological dispu¬ 
tations and sectarian strife, and has relegated 
into the background the great, yet simple 
spiritual truths of the lowly Nazarene. As a 
doctrine, its mysticism has a natural affinity 
with inherent superstition, dregs of which lie 
at the bottom of every human soul. 

It is Jesus’ persistent insistence on the duty 
of each to serve humanity that made him a 
great religious teacher. And it is His teach¬ 
ings, if we heed them, that will “save” us, aijtl 


3G EVOLUTION MADE TLAIN 

not his shed blood; that dried up within a 
few hours of his crucifixion. To say that we 
are “saved by the blood of the lamb” is a fine 
figure of speech, though a well-worn one. Of 
course, the martyrdom of Jesus adds emphasis 
to the truths be expounded, but it makes them 
not one whit truer than they were. 

Will the verbal inspirationalists please tell 
us when God quit sending messages to the 
world couched in his own words? It may be 
that that kind of inspiration ceased before Paul 
began preaching. If so, Paul is no greater, 
as an authority , than Whitefield or Moody. 

There is no reason why we should not read 
the Bible just as we would any other book, 
with reason enthroned. 

POPULAR OBJECTIONS ANSWERED 

Note.—The following objections to evolution 
with replies thereto are taken from a debate 
which the writer and several anti-evolutionists 
conducted some time ago through the columns 
of a popular weekly. 

An opponent says: “The evolutionists are 
trying to rob God of the honor of creation by 
substituting certain natural laws for his om¬ 
nipotent power. This world and all therein 
didn’t ‘just happen’; it was created on purpose. 
We oppose this Darwin heresy because it con¬ 
flicts with the divinely-inspired word of God. 
. . . My opponent should be more positive in 

some of his statements and not say, ‘So-and-so 
is the opinion cf scientists, if he would have 
us forsake our old beliefs and adopt his. . . . 


EVOLUTION MADE PLAIN 


37 


In regard to that crust of conservatism of ours 
which he says is so thick and hard that the 
truth cannot percolate through it—I, for one, 
would rather have a defensive armor so tough 
that lightning could not ‘faze’ it than be so 
spongy as to absorb every ism I came in con¬ 
tact with.” 

Is it a reflection upon the power, the glory, 
and the dignity of the Almighty to say that 
the creative act was by the operation of nat¬ 
ural law—a slaw, gradual, long-continued act 
—rather than a short, quick, mechanical, or su¬ 
pernatural, process? Before the dawn of sci¬ 
ence even the brightest minds, knowing little 
or nothing of the law of cause and effect, could 
not conceive of God as performing his mighty 
works save in some manlike manner. It seems 
that they had the idea—and a great many still 
have it—that during those six days of twenty- 
four hours each the Creator went about his 
work at his little old mud-mill, mixing and 
grinding the material, and shaping and mould¬ 
ing it into all sorts of animal forms on his 
potter wheel. It is time for the world to rid 
itself of the primitive idea that man originated 
as a sort of hand-made, table-turned piece of 
pottery. 

Others say that God merely “spoke” all 
things into existence. If that view be correct, 
then according to the rest of the Genesis story 
of creation God became so tired from this 
lingual feat of six days’ duration that he was 
compelled to take a rest at the week’s end. 
Is it possible that a God of infinite power and 
endurance should become so weary with a 


38 EVOLUTION MADE PLAIN 

week’s work, either of hand or tongue, that 
he would require a rest? 

There is not the slightest evidence that God 
ever did an hour’s work save through natural 
law. 

Between the scientists and the literal in 
terpreters of the Bible the war has been long 
and fierce, and has raged on many a battle 
front; but so far, the scientists have won in 
every contest. There was once a battle be¬ 
tween the scientists and those who believed 
the earth to be flat—for did not John, the 
Revelator, see four angels standing on the 
four corners of the earth? The literalists were 
defeated. There was once a contest between 
the astronomers and those who believed the 
sun and moon revolved around the earth— 
“And he said in the sight of all Israel, Sun, 
stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, 
in the valley of Ajelon ... So the sun 
stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted 
not to go down about a whole day” (Joshua, 
10:12, 13). The literalists were defeated. 
There was one a clash between the geologists 
and those who believed the world to have been 
created in six twenty-four-hour days. Again 
the literalists were defeated. There is a com¬ 
bat between those who hold the view that all 
organisms including man were created by nat¬ 
ural laws—operating just as they do today— 
and those who hold to either the potter or 
the vocal process of creation. The latter— 
well, they occupy the same position as those 
did who said the earth is flat, and that is was 
made between the blink o’ morn on that great 


EVOLUTION MADE PLAIN 39 

First Monday 6,000 years ago and the evening 
twilight the following Saturday. 

Scientists do not claim that life on this earth 
began by accident, or that anything “just hap¬ 
pens.” On the contrary, it is owing to science 
that a belief in accidents and chance in the 
material world has been banished from think¬ 
ing minds. It is true that a great majority of 
the people still believe in chance in the psychic • 
world; such as, a certain individual prompted 
by certain motives, and acting in accord with 
his nature under certain conditions, did a cer¬ 
tain thing, when the same individual prompted 
by the same motives could have done other¬ 
wise—that is to say, the same causes acting 
under the same conditions can produce effects 
of various kinds, either good acts or bad acts. 
But science will finally force the world to 
accept the whole truth—that mind is as 
much subject to law as is matter; that the 
thoughts, desires, deeds of men are shaped by 
law. 

Scientists are trying to teach us to exercise 
our powers of reason, to form our own opinions 
from the evidence, not passively to accept opin¬ 
ions on authority. Their method is the direct 
opposite of that of the orthodox theologians. 
The latter wish us to regard authority, in 
matters of religion especially, as superior to 
reason. No, Mr. Opponent, I don’t wish any¬ 
one to forsake his old belief and accept mine 
on my authority—or that of anyone else. Let 
reason and evidence be the only authority. 

To win converts to evolution is not my only 
object in discussing the subject. What is quite 
as important (and, frankly, to me as enjoy- 


40 EVOLUTION MADE PLAIN 

able) is to make use of the opportunities the 
discussion affords me of giving a sort of fifth- 
rib dig o’ the thumb to those complacent ones 
who (judging by the manner they acquired, and 
still retain, their beliefs) seem to think that 
the mere accident of one’s birth and parentage 
in a certain time and place, thus bringing him 
in contact with certain prevailing opinions, is 
• proof that those opinions are true. 

This writer is speaking largely from his own 
mental experience. He, like his opponent, ab¬ 
sorbed orthodox theology along with political 
standpattism and a few other “safe and sane” 
isms from his early environment. My opponent, 
like most others, never thought of questioning 
the truth of those beliefs, but left them un¬ 
disturbed until they fossilized. On the other 
hand some of us, perhaps because of a radical 
twist in our mental make-up, set ourselves to 
examining those hand-me-down beliefs and 
found some of them lacking in some important 
essentials. Having changed sides on one or 
more important questions w r e naturally lost 
faith in the more-or-less popular theory that 
because an idea is old, or is held by a majority 
of the people, it must therefore necessarily be 
true. That is the extent of this writer’s 
“sponginess.” As a rule when we have learned 
that we have absorbed most of our political, 
religious and other early opinions from our 
environment through the pores of our skin we 
become less cock-sure we have a monopoly on 
truth. 

As a rule latitude and longitude instead of 
reason shapes our opinions on the most impor- 


EVOLUTION MADE PLAIN 41 

tant issues. We are generally Protestants, 
Catholics, Mohammedans, Confucians, Mon¬ 
archists, democrats or republicans, according 
to whether we happened to be born and reared 
in Spain, Turkey, China, Mississippi or Ver¬ 
mont. 

An old English Philosopher says: “Men 
have always thought and believed in masses. 
Throughout the whole earth you may observe 
opinions and ideas, like swarms of bees, clus¬ 
tering together upon particular spots, or as if, 
like certain trees and plants, they were indigen¬ 
ous to the soil.” Another writer says, “Men 
think in packs as jackals hunt.” 

A young minister exclaims: “There is a 
gulf between man and the inferior animals 
which no amount of sophistry, alias science, 
can ever bridge. There is more than a missing- 
link—a thousand links. Man differs from ani¬ 
mals in mental faculties. Lower animals can¬ 
not originate an idea. ... If man was evolved 
from a beast, where did he get his soul? You 
cannot say it evolved, too. There was a definite 
hour when man, possessing an immortal spirit, 
walked this earth, or else man is yet a beast. 

“If the soul was slowly evolved, and if that 
long-tailed monkey who squatted upon the 
lower branches of your ancestral tree had a 
piece of a soul, and you should meet that poor 
little piece of a soul in the future land of 
spirits, wouldn’t you be ‘sorter’ ashamed on the 
morning after the Resurrection to walk up to 
it and say, ‘Howdy, Grandpa?’ 

“You may boast that your grandfather was 
a monkey, your great-grandfather a bullfrog, 


42 EVOLUTION MADE PLAIN 

and your great-great-grandfather a wiggletail 
but I claim for mine no such illustrious an¬ 
cestry.” 

Well, that settles it! To save our pride—or 
our vanity rather—I suppose we’ll have to shut 
our eyes to the evidences and reject evolution. 
After all, perhaps the world’s greatest thinkers 
have been following the wrong trail in the pur¬ 
suit of truth; instead of weighing the evidence 
for and against a theory they should have 
adopted the infinitely simpler plan of deciding 
it according to whether or not we like it! All 
anti-evolutionists find it necessary to appeal to 
our pride of ancestry to hold us to an ancient 
dogma. Even Mr. Bryan regards this appeal to 
petty personal vanity as legitimate argument 
against evolution. How they hate to give up 
the ennobling idea that we are the degraded 
descendants of a perfect, god-like pair! 

Are the lower animals so very inferior to 
man because, as my friend says, they cannot 
originate an idea? Lots of us higher animals 
could plead guilty to the same charge; and, 
what is worse, two or three generations must 
pass before the majority of us will even seri¬ 
ously consider an idea some one else originated 
—even when all the facts are for, and none 
against it. 

It is not necessary to bridge every gulf be¬ 
tween man and amoeba to prove evolution. If 
all gaps between species were filled with “links” 
as thick as down on a goose’s feather then all 
creatures from Shakespeare to angle worms 
would belong to the same species. In that 


EVOLUTION MADE PLAIN 43 

case all animals would be either poets or fish- 

bait. 

I know of no reason why man evolved from a 
lower mammal could not have acquired a soul 
just as easily as if he were fashioned directly 
from a batch of mud. And I infer from that 
sublime paragraph of my reverend friend’s clos¬ 
ing with the touching salutation, “Howdy, 
Grandpa,”—whoop-ee!—that his idea of heaven 
is that it is just about as stagnant a place as 
he believes this world to be. May not poor 
little stunted souls—if there are such there—• 
be permitted to unfold and develop in the 
genial environment of the realm of the blest? 

My opponent seems to be perturbed in re¬ 
gard to the exact period in the development 
of the race, “the definite hour,” when man 
came into possesion of a soul. To this ques¬ 
tion let us apply cold, merciless logic. The 
biologic history of the human race is recapitu¬ 
lated in the embryonic life of each individual. 
There are no difficulties in the way of deter¬ 
mining at what precise period the soul was in¬ 
jected into the race-man that are not also met 
with in regard to the individual. My reverend 
friend, can you point out the “definite hour”— 
why not definite minute, or second?—when in 
your embryonic development you became pos¬ 
sessed of a soul? And just three seconds before 
that event were you not in as woeful a plight 
as any soulless monkey that ever cooled him¬ 
self by swinging to and fro, suspended from a 
leafy bough by means of his prehensile caudal 
appendage? 

Is it not possible that a little bit of envy of 


44 EVOLUTION MADE PLAIN 

that large-souled race of the future does not 
mingle with your shame of an animal ancestry 
when you rise and exclaim, “Away with the 
theory of the upward trend in God’s works; I 
will none of it?”—for it is a fact that whatever 
sense of shame one may feel for our lowly an¬ 
cestors it is more than compensated for by the 
pride one may feel for the noble race that is to 
be; because if the path along which we have 
travelled in past ages points downward in the 
rear, it just as surely points upward in front. 
Our destiny will be as high as our origin was 
low. And as man drops his foolish prejudices 
and grows more intelligent, as he learns more 
about the laws of his development, the more 
rapidly will he advance physically, mentally, 
spiritually. 

Ah! Parson, far better to be the tadpole an¬ 
cestor of an ever-progressive angel breed than 
be the degraded descendant of a race of gods; 
yet a race without hope of ever again reaching 
the much-lauded, pristine purity and perfec¬ 
tion of Adam—a creature really whose moral 
status was so low, and who was so weak, that 
he fell at the first temptation. 

Civilization, culture, the moral nature of 
man, have been developed; they are not the 
remains of something that has been lost. Hu¬ 
man nature is not ruined, but is unfinished. 
The god-like race is not of the past, but be¬ 
longs to the future. Man entered the zone of 
sin not from above, but from below. Probably 
no man who ever walked this earth save Jesus 
Christ has ever breathed the pure moral at¬ 
mosphere above the zone of sin. Through this 


45 


EVOLUTION MADE I LAIN 

zone, from the pre-human to the man of Galilee, 
from the sinless state of the lower animals and 
of the child-man to the sinless perfection of the 
divine, the whole race, ’mid struggles and 
trials and sorrows and anguish, must pass, is 
passing. 


NATURAL SELECTION AND FUTURE 
PROGRESS 

Every truth man has discovered, every sound 
moral precept, is rooted in Nature. She is the 
rough model to be followed by man if his in¬ 
stitutions are to endure. He goes wrong when 
he opposes her laws; he is right when he is in 
agreement with her, refining away her crude¬ 
ness. Man creates nothing; he can only imi¬ 
tate, often poorly. He boasts of his works— 
really they are the product of Nature working 
through him, using him as an instrument. 

We have seen that Nature does not hesitate 
to destroy the individual if the species to which 
it belongs is thereby benefitted. She looks be¬ 
yond the present generation to the welfare ot 
the race that is to be, thus teaching us the 
highest morality we can know, the broadest 
religion, i, e., that the good of the race, the 
COMMON GOOD, is all important, and that the 
individual should willingly sacrifice his labor, 
his life, when the good of humanity demands it. 
Jesus Christ, Socrates, and a host of less 
known martyrs have proved their devotion to 
the common good by making the supreme sac¬ 
rifice. In so doing they have hewn to the line 


4 6 EVOLUTION MADE PLAIN 

chalked out by Mother Nature eons ago when 
inorganic matter first felt the stir of life. 
Jesus was announcing this principle when he 
said, “For whosoever will save his life”—strive 
for self alone—“shall lose it; and whosoever 
will lose his life for my sake”—and the sake 
of humanity which Jesus himself valued higher 
than his own life—“shall find it.” Though only 
a few will have occasion to suffer martyrdom, 
the call to all of us is to live the life of unself¬ 
ishness, be the end what it may. To live for 
the race is just as noble, if less dramatic, as 
to die for it. 

Thus we find that Nature’s most vital prin¬ 
ciple is in perfect accord with the profoundest 
religious truths. We have been taught that 
Nature is cruel, that her hands are red with 
the blood of the innocent, but this idea was 
born of our short-sightedness. We could not 
see beyond the outward act to the underlying 
law and its results. 

For man so to shape his life and deeds as to 
be in harmony with the great law of natural 
selection and with the fundamental principle 
of religion does not mean self-effacement, the 
suppression of individuality. On the contrary, 
it means self-development, individuality in the 
best sense. As a species or a race is com¬ 
posed of individuals, the more highly developed 
are the individuals the greater the species. 
Self-development is the growth of the individ¬ 
ual out of narrow selfishiness and in accord 
with the laws of human betterment. Selfish¬ 
ness expanded, refined and ennobled becomes 
altruism, the love of ethers. 



EVOLUTION MADE PLAIN 47 

That the selfish person defeats his own ends, 
cheats himself, is a truism. Only the unselfish 
person, holding humanity dearer than his own 
self, enjoys to the fullest all that belongs to 
selfhood, for he alone lias the capacity for real 
enjoyment—or deserves it. The supremely 
selfish—the criminal, the grafter, the one who 
seeks to profit in any way at the expense of 
others—stands in the same relation to his race 
as the inferior animal to its species—he pulls 
down the average of the race, and is at cross 
purposes with Nature. 

To condone in one’s self any of the many 
forms of sefishness, whether it be greed, theft, 
lying, lust, or vanity, is to put one’s self in the 
same class with those defective wild creatures 
which Nature ruthlessly destroys. 

When a great ethical doctrine is grounded 
on a scientific basis it becomes doubly con¬ 
vincing. Let the whole truth in regard to each 
individual’s duty to the race be taught—the 
scientific half of it along with the emotional, 
idealistic half. No one who feels the full force 
of this truth will, in order to “make a living,” 
take out of the COMMON GOOD fund more 
than he puts into it, but less, rather. It should 
be instilled into the minds of youth that the 
welfare of the race is the supreme duty of 
each, and that the greatest individual happi¬ 
ness is attained only through the self-develop¬ 
ment and self-expression of the individual 
along this line. But, alas! the enlightened 
legislatures of some of our sovereign states 
have forbid the teaching of natural selection 
to children. The reason given is that it might 
rcb them cf their religion! 


48 EVOLUTION MADE PLAIN 

The time is near when the conduct of man in 
every field of endeavor will be tested by the 
standard of loyalty and devotion to the com¬ 
mon good. Certain gainful occupations in¬ 
jurious to the common welfare are already gone 
or going. Eliminated as unfit will be the greedy 
parasites that fasten themselves onto the so¬ 
cial body on pretense of aiding some industry 
to function, and -who give little or nothing in 
return for the public pap that fills their maws 
to repletion—eliminated just as Nature elimi¬ 
nates the animal that would bring degeneracy 
to its species. They will be forced to take up 
a work wherein their services shall equal their 
pay. The route between the producer and the 
consumer will be shortened, and the two will 
stand nearer on a level—as viewed from the 
price of the product. 

This lesson from the book of Nature we have 
been studying has a universal application. Its 
truths are applicable in every field and de¬ 
partment wherein man and his activities are 
employed—in private conduct, religion, govern¬ 
ment and industry. 

* * * 

Of all animals man is most subject to dis¬ 
ease and defect in body and in mind. Sickly, 
or mal-formed wild animals are so rare as sel¬ 
dom to be seen. This is almost as true of domes¬ 
ticated animals, though epidemics sometimes 
sweep them off. Animals mentally defective 
are almost unknown. But man is assailed with 
a thousand ailments. Defective organs, func¬ 
tional disorders, chronic invalidism are com¬ 
mon. Malformations of body, also of brain 


EVOLUTION MADE PLAIN 49 

causing idiocy, stupidity, insanity and crime, 
are a hundred times more frequent in man than 
in lower animals, wild or domesticated. Why 
this difference? The answer is easy for any¬ 
one familiar with the laws of evolution. 

The sedulous sifting by natural selection of 
animals in the wild state has left no sickly or 
half-witted degenerates to burden the world 
with a like progeny. If at rare intervals the 
law of variation should drop a mal-formed spec¬ 
imen into Nature’s sieve it would be quickly 
eliminated along with the great mass of aver¬ 
ages. Practically the same is true of domesti¬ 
cated animals where the watchful eye of man 
is substituted for Nature’s. 

As natural selection is hampered in its oper¬ 
ation among domesticated animals by the inter¬ 
ference cf man, so is it limited on the human 
plane. There, we find virtually no selection, 
neither natural nor artificial. Hence the de¬ 
generacy—physical, mental, moral. Both Na¬ 
ture and man, in their respective fields of 
operation, select only a few of the best for prop¬ 
agating purposes — Nature eliminating the 
rest by death, and man by sterilization. But 
on the human plane man—acting mercifully 
toward the individual, mercilessly toward the 
race—does his best to thwart Nature. He pro¬ 
longs the lives of weaklings, of the maimed- 
from-birth, cf the deaf and dumb and blind, 
and of the mentally sub-normal. So far, all is 
well. But he permits these victims of an in¬ 
ferior ancestry to marry and procreate almost 
without limit. What then can we expect but 
for the world to be burdened with invalids, 


50 EVOLUTION MADE PLAIN 

runts, and the mal-formed—cursed with morons, 
sub-morons, half-wits, quarter-wits, and pre¬ 
destined criminals? And worse for the entire 
race, this class shades upward by imperceptible 
degrees into all gradations, mingling its in¬ 
ferior strains with the best. It has always 
been so; therefore all of us, far more than 
wild animals, have a mixed ancestry, of the 
good and the less good. 

Why is it that man has not learned to rid 
himself of this lower fringe of degeneracy as 
is done in the case of every other species of 
animal? It is mainly because the superstition 
of an out-worn theology has so muddled his 
brains that he has been unable to see that the 
laws of Nature are as applicable to himself 
as to all other creatures. He has always fan¬ 
cied himself as occupying a higher plane than 
that on which Nature has her laboratory. So 
he has always depended on “divine” laws, not 
those o£ “carnal nature,” to plant his feet on 
higher ground. And we see the result. Not¬ 
withstanding his high intellectual and moral 
faculties, as a race, he is the most defective 
animal on earth. What is the remedy? 

If we would solve this pressing problem we 
must apply the laws of Nature to man in some 
such manner as they have always applied to 
the rest of the animal kingdom. The unfit 
must be prevented from reproducing its kind. 
How? There are only two methods: Nature’s, 
by bringing about the death of the unfit pros¬ 
pective parent, and man’s, the sterilization 
method. But among the better traits of man 
which have been slowly evolved in his age¬ 
long struggle reaching back to an immemorial 


EVOLUTION MADE PLAIN 51 

past is sympathy, mercy. This bars him from 
using Nature’s method of preventing undesir¬ 
able offspring; nor can he use the sterilization 
method except in extreme cases. Born crim¬ 
inals, perverts, and other abnormal misfits who 
persist in indulging their selfish passions in 
detriment of the Common Good—for such, com¬ 
prising perhaps 5 to 10 per cent of the race, 
sterilization is the quickest and surest preven¬ 
tive. Once the milder type of defectives are 
made to realize the heinous crime of bringing 
degenerate children into the world they would 
in most cases refrain from marriage and procre¬ 
ation. Wise restrictive laws and an awakened 
public opinion would do the rest. This eugen- 
ical system is the only one that promises hope 
for the salvation of the race. From generation 
to generation, owing to the fecundity of the 
less fit and their proneness to “let Nature take 
her course,” their numbers increase, and so, 
too, the danger increases of their swamping 
the fitter. 

* * * 

From the exposition of natural selection it 
will be seen that all the laws of organic de¬ 
velopment—either of individuals, varieties or 
species—fall under two heads: those of hered¬ 
ity (the harking back to ancestral characters) 
and those of environment (all outside influ¬ 
ences). Variation, which seems so contradic¬ 
tory of the law of “like producing like,” is in 
reality a result of heredity. Offspring inherit 
traits, more or less repressive in one or both 
parents, in different degrees—this is variation. 

The gist of the matter is: heredity transmits 


52 EVOL.UI ION MADE PLAIN 

to environment the ancestral traits or char¬ 
acters, good and bad, of each creature. From 
these inherited traits environmental laws se¬ 
lect and nourish those best fitted to each par¬ 
ticular environment, and neglect, repress or 
destroy the less fit. At the birth of the in¬ 
dividual heredity has done its work, for good 
or ill; then environment receives the legacy 
bequeathed by its ancestry and completes the 
job—whether for the individual’s weal or woe 
depends both upon the quality of the material 
heredity handed down, and upon the character 
of the particular environment that works upon 
the material. As prior to birth heredity is the 
only factor in producing the individual, the ab¬ 
solute necessity of preventing the reproduction 
of the unfit, the inferior, becomes apparent; 
as after birth environment is the only factor, 
or sum of factors, in his production, the making 
the best possible environment for every one 
is the one absolute essential. 

The individual man, no less than other or¬ 
ganisms, is a creature of heredity and environ¬ 
ment. This is as true of his intellect and of 
his moral character as of his body. He is not 
a thing separate and apart, but a link in the 
chain of cause and effect. He is orbit-bound 
as planets are. Every thought of his brain, 
every desire of his heart, every deed of his 
hand is a natural and (circumstances consid¬ 
ered) unavoidable result of the laws of Nature 
working in and through him—as surely as 
every cause produces an effect and that every 
cause is itself an effect of a prior cause. In 
cases where opposing forces or influences tend 


EVOLUTION MADE PLAIN 


53 


to move the will in different directions it obeys 
the stronger—follows the path of least resist¬ 
ance. It cannot do otherwise—no more than 
Newton’s apple could have moved toward the 
moon. 

Scientists are generally agreed that none 
but “inborn” traits, the inherited ones, are 
transmissible to posterity—though Dr. Kram- 
merer has recently furnished some evidence to 
the contrary. If the generally accepted view 
be the true one, then of course “acquired” 
characters—the “improvements” of environ¬ 
ment—die with the individual. Certainly, en¬ 
vironment cannot put into the individual what 
it had no capacity for at birth; it can only 
develop what is already there. Hence the con¬ 
clusion: We may, we must, improve the en¬ 
vironment for the good of the living genera¬ 
tions as they arise; but above all, prevent the 
reproduction of the unfit for the incalculable 
benefit of the countless generations that are 
now waiting their turn in the womb of the 
future. 


❖ . ❖ * 

Man is such an egotistical creature—being a 
near relative of the gods, as he imagined, and 
being specially created and made lord over the 
other creatures—that he has always regarded 
himself as above and bejmnd Nature and not 
subject to her laws, or only so far as his body 
was concerned—that being the one link con¬ 
necting him with Nature. 

As the little boy evolved from his inner con* 


54 EVOLUTION MADE PLAIN 

sciousness his idea of the camel, of which he 
had never seen even a picture, so man in 
olden times evolved his theories of the origin 
of the world and of himself, and the part he 
was to play in life. According to his primitive 
way of thinking, the earth—which he regarded 
as the center of the universe—was a very small 
affair, over which Nature presided as a sort of 
satrap whose rulership was subject to inter¬ 
ference at any time by the Great King. Ac¬ 
cording to his theory there were two sets of 
laws, natural and divine, and they were often 
in conflict with each other. But man always 
had the right to appeal his case to the higher 
authority when not satisfied with Nature’s 
rulings. She had neither part nor jurisdiction 
in the human mind or soul—that coming not 
by way of her but directly from God. 

This was essentially the belief of millions 
for thousands of years, and it is the belief of 
millions today. This is the soil in which nearly 
all the creeds of today are rooted. 

The old theologians made a distinction be¬ 
tween God’s works and Nature’s works, divine 
laws and natural laws. It is because of this 
dual idea of God and Nature that the most 
fruitful scientific discovery of all time is barred 
from the schools in some states and denounced 
as “atheism” from many a pulpit. Those who 
hold to the old theology do not realize how com¬ 
pletely science has destroyed the foundations 
of their ancient belief, nor have they any con¬ 
ception of what an incalculable service modern 
thought has been to religion in clearing it of 
its impediments. 


EVOLUTION MADE PLAIN 55 

The bringing of science and reason to play- 
in the progress of man, the bringing of the 
blind forces of Nature more and more under 
subjection to his enlightened intelligence—this 
is but Nature exalting herself. Having built 
up a higher plane, the human plane, Nature 
works upon that to refine and ennoble herself 
—not purposely, or only so far as man works 
with a purpose. All, all is Nature. 


5G 


POCKET SERIES 


Other Titles in Pocket Series 


Drama 

295 Master Builder, Ibsen. 
90 Mikado. Gilbert. 

31 Pelleas and Melisande 
Maeterlinck. 

316 Prometheus. Aesehylos. 
308 Stoops to Conquer. 
Goldsmith. 

134 Misanthrope. Moliere. 
16 Ghosts. Ibsen. 

80 Pillars of Society. 
Ibsen. 

46 Salome. Wilde. 

54 Importance of Being 
Earnest. Wilde. 

8 Lady Windermere’s 
Fan. Wilde. 

131 Redemption. Tolstoy. 

99 Tartuffe. Moliere. 

226 The Anti-Semites. 
Schnitzler. 

Shakespeare’s Plays 

359 The Man Shakespeare. 
Vol. 1. Frank Harris. 

360 The Man Shakespeare. 
Vol. 2. Harris. 

361 The Man Shakespeare. 
Vol. 3. Harris. 

362 The Man Shakespeare. 
Vol 4. Harris. 

240 The Tempest. 


241 Merry Wives Windsor. 
2 42 As You Like It. 

2 43 Twelfth Night. 

244 Much Ado Nothing. 

2 45 Measure for Measure, 

246 Hamlet 

247 Macbeth. 

248 King Henry V. 

2 49 Julius Caesar. 

250 Romeo and Juliet. 

251 Midsummer Night’s 

252 Othello. 

253 King Henry VIII. 

254 Taming of Shrew. 

255 King Lear. 

2 56 Venus and Adonis. 

257 King Henry IV. 

Part I. 

2 5S King Henry IV. 

Part II. 

259 King Henry VI. 

Part I. 

260 King Henry VI. 

Part II. 

2G1' King Henry VI. 

Part III. 

262 Comedy of Errors. 

263 King John. 

264 King Richard III. 

265 King Richard II. 

267 Pericles. 

268 Merchant of Venice. 



307 

331 

357 

363 

377 

336 

333 

188 

352 

332 

280 

143 

182 

162 

345 

292 

199 

6 

15 


rOCKTCT SERIES 


57 


Fiction 

Tillyloss Scandal 
Barrie. 

Finest Story in the 
World. Kipling. 

City of the Dreadful 
Night. Kipling. 

Miggles and Other 
Stories. Harte. 

A Night in the Lux¬ 
embourg. Remy De 
Gourmont. 

The Mark of the 
Beast. Kipling. 
Mulvaney Stories. 
Kipling. 

Adventures of Baron 
Munchausen. 

Short Stories. Wm. 
Morris. 

The Man Who Was 
and Other Stories. 
Kipling. 

Happy Prince. Wilde. 
Time of Terror. Bal¬ 
zac. 

Daisy Miller. H. James. 
Rue Morgue. Poe. 
Clairmonde. Gautier. 
Fifi. De Maupassant. 
Tallow Ball. De Mau¬ 
passant. 

De Maupassant’s 
Stories. 

Balzac’s Stories. 


3 44 Don Juan. Balzac. 

318 Christ in Flanders. 
Balzac. 

230 Pieces of Gold. Gau¬ 
tier 

178 One of Cleopatra’s 
Nights. Gautier. 

314 Short Stories. Daudet. 
58 Boccaccio’s Stories. 

45 Tolstoi’s Short Stories. 
12 Poe’s Tales of Mystery. 
290 The Gold Bug. Poe. 
145 Great Ghost Stories. 

21 Carmen. Merimee. 

23 Great Sea Stories. 

319 Saint-Gerane. Dumas. 
38 Jekyll and Hyde. 

279 Will o’ Mill. Stevenson. 
311 Lodging for Night. 
Stevenson. 

27 Last Days Condemned 
Man. Hugo. 

151 Man Would Be King. 
Kipling. 

148 Strength of Strong 
London. 

41 Xmas Carol. Dickens. 
57 Rip Van Winkle. 

Irving. 

100 Red Laugh. Andrevev. 
105 7 Hanged. Andrever. 
102 Sherlock Holmesi Tiles. 
161 Country of Blind 
Wells. 

85 Attack on Mill. Zola. 



POCKET SERIES 


58 

156 Andersen’s Fairy Tales. 
158 Alice in Wonderland. 
37 Dream of Ball. Morris. 
40 House & Brain. Lytton. 
72 Color of Life. Halde- 
man-Julius. 

198 Majesty of Justice. 

Anatole France. 

215 Miraculous Revenge. 
Shaw. 

24 The Kiss. Chekhov. 

2 85 Euphorian. Moore. 

219 Human Tragedy. 

France. 

19G The Marquise. Sand. 
239 2 0 Men and Girl. 

Gorki. 

29 Dreams. Schreiner. 

23 2 Three Strangers. 

Hardy. 

277 Man Without a 
Country. 

History & Biography 

141 Life of Napoleon. 
Finger 

43 2 Tragic Story of Oscar 
Wilde’s Life. Finger. 

3 40 Life of Jesus. Ernest 

Renan. 

183\Life of Jack London. 
269 Contemporary Por- 
^aits. Vol. I. 

Frank Harris. 


270 Contemporary Pox 
traits. Vol. 2. 

Frank Harris. 

271 Contemporary Por¬ 
traits. Vol. 3. 

Frank Harris. 

272 Contemporary Por¬ 
traits. Vol. 4. 

Frank Harris. 

328 Addison and His Time. 
312 Life of Sterne. 

324 Life of Lincoln. 

3 23 Life of Joan of Arc. 

33 9 Thoreau—the Man 
Who Escaped From 
the Herd. 

120 History of Rome. Giles. 
128 Ju ius Caesar’s Life. 
185 History of Printing. 
119 Historic Crimes. 

Finger. 

175 Science of History. 
Froude. 

104 Waterloo. Hugo. 

52 Voltaire. Hugo. 

125 War Speeches of 
Wilson. 

2 2 Tolstoy, Life and Wks. 
14 2 Bismarck’s Life. 

280 When Puritans Ruled. 
3 43 Life of Columbus. 

00 Crimes of Borgias. 
Dumas. 

287 Whistler; The Man 
and His Work. 

51 Life of Bruno. 




POCKET SERIES 


59 


147 Cromwell and Ilis 
Times. 

230 Heart Affairs Henry 
VHI. 

50 Paine’s Common Sense. 

88 Vindication of Paine. 
Ingersoll. 

33 Brann: Sham Smasher. 

103 Life in Greece and 
Rome. 

214 Speeches of Lincoln. 

270 Speeches of Washing¬ 
ton. 

144 Was Poe Immoral? 

223 Essay on Swinburne. 

150 Lost Civilizations. 

22 7 Keats. The Man and 
His Work. 

170 Constantine and Be¬ 
ginnings of Chris¬ 
tianity. 

201 Satan and the Saints. 

07 Church History. 

109 Voices From the Past. 

200 Life of Shakespeare. 

123 Life of Du Barry. 

139 Life of Dante. 

09 Life of Mary, Queen 
of Scots. 

5 Life of Johnson. 
Macaulay. 

174 Trial of William Penn. 


Humor 

291 Jumping Frog. Twain. 

18 Idle Thoughts. Jerome. 
106 English as She Is 
Spoke. Twain. 

231 Humorous Sketches. 
Twain. 

205 Artemus Ward. His 
Book. 

187 Whistler’s Humor. 

216 Wit of Heine. Eliet. 
20 Let’s Laugh. Nasby. 

Literature 

442 Oscar Wilde in Out¬ 
line. Finger. 

305 Machiavelli. Lord 
Macaulay. 

358 Virginibus Puerisque. 
Stevenson. 

431 Literary Stars on 
Scandinavian Firma¬ 
ment. Moritzen. 

435 Hundred Best Books. 
Powys. 

109 Dante and Other 
Waning Classics. 

Vol. 1. Mordell. 

110 Dante and Other 
Waning Classics. 

Vol. 2. Mordell. 

349 An Apology for Idlers. 
Stevenson. 

355 Aucassin and Nicolete. 
Lang. 



60 


POCKET SERIES 


278 Friendship, etc. 
Thoreau. 

195 Nature. Thoreau. 

2 20 England in Shake¬ 
speare’s Time. Finger. 
194 Chesterfield’s Letters. 
63 Defense of Poetry. 
Shelley. 

97 Love Letters of King 
Henry VIII. 

3 Essays. Voltaire. 

28 Toleration. Voltaire. 
89 Love Letters of Genius. 
186 How I Wrote “The 
Raven.” Poe. 

87 Love. Montaigne. 

4S Bacon’s Essays. 

60 Emerson’s Essays. 

84 Letters of Portuguese 
Nun. 

2 6 Going to Church. Shaw. 
135 Socialism for Million¬ 
aires. Shaw. 

61 Tolstoy’s Essays. 

176 Four Essays. Ellis. 
160 Shakespeare. Ingersoll. 

75 Choice of Books. 
Carlyle. 

288 Chesterfield and Ra¬ 
belais. Sainte-Beuve. 

76 Prince of Peace. Bryan. 
86 On Reading. Brandes. 

213 Linco’n. Ingersoll. 

95 ConfLSs'on of Opium 
Eater. 


177 Subjection of Women. 
Mill. 

17 Walking. Thoreau. 

70 Lamb’s Essays. 

235 Essays. Chesterton. 

7 Liberal Education. 
Huxley. 

23 3 Literature and Art. 
Goethe. 

225 Condescension in For¬ 
eigners. Lowell. 

221 Women and Other 
Essays. Maeterlinck. 

10 Shelley. Thompson. 

2S9 Pepys’ Diary. 

29 9 Prose Nature Notes. 
Whitman. 

315 Pen, Pencil, Poison. 
Wilde. 

313 Decay of Lying. Wilde 
3 6 Soul of Man. Wi'dc. 
293 Villon: Stevenson. 

Maxims & Epigrams 

77 What Great Men Have 
Said About Women. 
304 What Great Women 
Have Said About Men. 
179 Gems From Emerson. 
310 Wisdom of Thackeray. 
193 Wit and Wisdom of 
Charles Lamb. 

56 Wisdom of Ingersoll. 
100 Aphorisms. Sand. 

1C3 Epigrams. Wilde. 



POCKET SERIES 


61 


59 Epigrams of Wit ami 
Wisdom. 

35 Maxims.- Rochefoucauld. 

154 Epigrams of Ibsen. 

197 Witticisms De Sevignc. 

180 Epigrams of Shaw. 

155 Maxims. Napoleon. 

181 Epigrams. Thoreau. 

228 Aphorisms. Huxley. 

113 Proverbs of England. 

114 Proverbs of France. 

115 Proverbs of Japan. 

110 Proverbs of China. 

117 Proverbs of Italy. 

118 Proverbs of Russia. 

119 Proverbs of Ireland. 

12 0 Proverbs of Spain. 

121 Proverbs of Arabia. 

34 8 Proverbs of Scotland. 
380 Proverbs of Yugoslavia. 

Philosophy and 
Religion 

273 Social Contract. 
Rousseau. 

3G4 Art of Controversy. 
Schopenhauer. 

111 Words of Jesus. Yol. 

1. Henry C. Vedder. 

112 Words of Jesus. Vol. 

2. Vedder. 

39 Guide to Aristotle. 
Durant. 

33 8 A Guide to Emerson. 
218 Essence of the Talmud. 


Guide to Nietsche. 
Hamblen. 

Guide to Plato. 

Durant. 

Buddhist Philosophy. 
Theory Reincarnation. 
Plato’s Republic. 
Schopenhauer’s Essays. 
Trial and Death of 
Socrates. 

Meditations of Aurelius. 
Eucken; Life and 
Philosophy. 

Age of Reason. Paine. 
Spencer. Life and 
Works. 

Aesop’s Fables. 
Discovery of Future. 
Wells. 

Dialogues. Plato. 
Essence of Buddhism. 
Pocket Theology. 
Voltaire. 

Foundations of 
Religion. 

Studies in Pessimism. 
Schopenhauer. 

Idea of God in Nature. 
Mill. 

Life and Character. 
Goethe. 

Ignorant Philosopher. 
Voltaire. 

Thoughts of Pascal. 
Stoic Philosophy. 
Murray. 


11 

159 

322 

124 

157 

02 

94 

65 

G4 

4 

55 

44 

165 

96 

325 

103 

132 

138 

211 

212 

200 

101 

210 




G2 


POCKET SERIES 


224 God. Known and Un¬ 
known. Butler. 

19 Nietzsche; Who He 
Was. 

204 Sun Worship. Tichenor. 
207 Olympian Gods. 
Tichenor. 

184 Primitive Beliefs. 

153 Chinese Philosophy of 
Life. 

30 What Life Means to 
Me. London. 

Poetry 

294 Sonnets From 
Portuguese. 

Browning. 

3 4G Old English Ballads. 
29G Lyric Love. Robert 
Browning. 

301 Sailor Chanties and 
Cowboy Songs. 

Finger. 

351 Memories of Lincoln. 
Whitman. 

298 Today’s Poetry. 
Anthology. 

305 Odes of Horace. Vol 1. 
3GG Odes of Horace. Vol. 2. 

9 Great English Poems. 
152 Kasidah. Burton. 

283 Courtship of Miles 
Standish. 

282 Rime of Ancient 
Mariner. 

317 L’Allegro. Milton. 


29 7 Poems. Southey. 

329 Dante’s Inferno. Vol. 1. 

330 Dante’s Inferno. Vol. 2. 
30G Shropshire Lad. 

284 Poems of Burns. 

1 Rubaiyat. 

73 Whitman’s Poems. 

23 7 Prose Poems. 
Baudelaire. 

2 Wilde’s Ballad of 
Reading Jail. 

32 Poe’s Poems. 

1G4 Michael Angelo’s 
Sonnets. 

71 Poems of Evolution. 

14G Snow-Bound. Pied 
Piper. 

78 Enoch Arden. 

G8 Shakespeare’s Sonnets. 

281 Lays of Ancient Rome. 
173 Vision of Sir Launfal. 

222 The Vampire. Kipling. 

Science 

445 Psychical Research. 

Vol. 1. Carrington. 

44G Psychical Research. 

Vol. 2. Carrington. 

13 Man and His Ancestors. 
Fenton. 

447 Auto-Suggestion— 

How It Works. 

William J. Felding. 

408 Introduction to • 
Einstein. Iludgings. 

409 Great Men of Science. 



POCKET SERIES 


47 Animals of Ancient 
Seas. Fenton. 

274 Animals of Ancient 
Lands. Fenton. 

327 Ice Age. Finger. 

321 History of Evolution. 
217 Puzzle of Personality. 
—Psycho-Analysis. 

190 Psycho-Analysis. 
Fielding. 

140 Biology and Spiritual 
Philosophy. 

275 Building of Earth. , 

49 Evolution. Haeckel. 

42 Origin of Human Race. 
238 Reflections on Science. 

Huxley. 

202 Survival of Fittest. 
Tichenor. 

191 Evolution vs. Religion. 
Balmforth. 

133 Electricity Explained. 
92 Hypnotism Made Plain. 
53 Insects and Men. 

189 Eugenics. Ellis. 

Series of Debates 

130 Controversy. Ingersoll 
and Gladstone. 

43 Marriage and Divorce. 
Greeley and Owen. 

208 Debate on Birth Con¬ 
trol. Mrs. Sanger and 
Russell. 

129 Rome or Reason. In¬ 
gersoll and Manning. 
122 Spiritualism. Doyle 
and McCabe. 


63 

171 Has Life Any Meaning? 
Harris and Ward. 

206 Capitalism. Seligman 
and Nearing. 

234 McNeal-Sinclair Debate 
on Socialism. 

Miscellaneous 

342 Hints on News Report¬ 
ing. 

326 Hints on Short Stories. 
192 Book of Synonyms. 

25 Rhyming Dictionary. 

78 How to Be an Orator. 
S2 Faults in English. 4 
127 What Expectant Moth¬ 
ers Should Know. 

81 Care of the Baby. 

136 Child Training. 

137 Home Nursing. 

14 What Every Girl 

Should Know. 

Mrs. Sanger. 

91 Manhood: Facts of 
Life. 

83 Marriage. Besant. 

74 On Threshold of Sex. 
98 How to Love. 

172 Evolution of Love. 

203 Rights of Women. 

Ellis. 

209 Aspects Birth Control. 

93 How to Live 100 Years. 
167 Plutarch’s Rules of 
Health. 

320 Prince. Machiavelli. 












v> 






. \ 














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